[A hybrid orchid. Photo by Mark Freeth.] [“Molecularization of Identity” Workshop Recap, Part 2] Genomes of indigenous people, which often include genes found nowhere else in the world, can be powerful symbols for nations that want to showcase their uniqueness. But when the Mexico’s Instituto Nacional de Medicina Genómica (INMEGEN) set out to find examples …

Yesterday, I wrote about why many pieces about the need for investigative science journalism don’t acknowledge the factors behind its scarcity. Conversations about investigations in science journalism often seem to assume that reporters don’t see critiquing science as important, but journalists’ individual interests don’t set the tone for journalistic coverage all by themselves. In journalism, …

[^^”How do you know?”: The question that science journalists must not forget to ask.] One night about a month ago, I was at a friend’s birthday party, knocking back tequila and rum with assorted MIT-affiliated twentysomethings. Somehow I ended up talking about tardigrades with a post-doc from an uber-spiffy genetics institute. [This is what a …

[Trigger Warning: rape, anti-theism, and appropriation of scientific authority by bigots.] Richard Dawkins confounds me. On the one hand, he’s brilliant. On the other hand, he tweets bulls*** like this series of tweets where he tries to argue that “logically” “stranger rape” is worse than “date rape”, but saying that “stranger rape” is worse is …

This past Saturday, I got to listen in on an all-star panel sponsored by the Future of Life Institute on the potential risks and benefits of technologies like artificial intelligence, personal genetics, and automated factories. We heard from George Church, one of the world’s best-known synthetic biologists, on the future of bioengineering; Ting Wu, director …

When I think about what it means to be a science journalist, I think about chocolate. I’m not kidding. One night when I went to a talk about the science of food, and one of the presenters, a Harvard professor/master chef, started telling us about the difference between good and bad chocolate. “If you take …

The Talk: A Cognitive Neuroscience Approach to the Early Identification of Autism In Plain English: A scientist investigates the patterns of neural wiring in infants whose older siblings have autism The Speaker: Charles Nelson of Boston Children’s Hospital The Sponsor: Simons Center for the Social Brain at MIT What it covered: Dr. Charles “Chuck” Nelson …

The Talk: “Autism, Neurodiversity, and Disability Rights: Then and Now” In Plain English: Disability advocates are in the middle of an ongoing struggle to ensure civil rights for autistic individuals, and hardly anyone has seemed to notice. The Speaker: Ari Ne’eman, president of the Autistic Self-Advocacy Network The Location: Harvard Law School Project on Disability …

Epidemic of Absence tackles one of the trickiest and trendiest topics in 21st-century biomedical research: the complex relationship between autoimmune disease and the bacteria that live in our guts.

A growing body of evidence suggests that by decimating the number of pathogenic microbes people are exposed to, modern medicine has inadvertently shifted the ecological balance between the human immune system and the human microbiome, leaving millions of people vulnerable to allergies and autoimmune disease.

The basic evolutionary argument is that our immune system evolved to cope with a constant onslaught of opportunistic microbes by developing a complex system of checks-and-balances with our bodies’ microbial populations. With those microbes gone, many of the immune system’s coping strategies are having disastrous side effects. In this book, Velasquez-Manoff implicates the depletion of bacterial biodiversity as a driving agent in the pretty much every non-infectious disease you can think of (cancer, depression, Crohn’s, Celiac’s, allergies, and autism are all covered in this book).

The Upsides:

It’s a rare snapshot of a scientific revolution in progress. And it’s easily the most thought-provoking book I’ve read all year.